A wide variety of firing mechanisms for firearms have been developed in the past. In conventional trigger mechanisms, when the gun is cocked, a sear engages a hammer. When the trigger is pulled, it causes the sear to disengage from the hammer, and the hammer falls to fire the gun.
In some previous trigger mechanisms, if a cocked gun, with the safety in the off position, is dropped or subjected to some other severe jarring force, such as the firing of the first barrel in a double-barrel shot gun, the sear can disengage from the hammer and the gun can accidentally fire. Accordingly, effort has been directed to the development of firing mechanisms in which the possibility of accidental firing, after the gun has been cocked, is reduced or eliminated.